Post by hayesydaze on Sept 29, 2010 19:44:57 GMT -5

So, when I told my mother that I recently fell in love with ML, she surprised me by saying that she had always wanted to watch the show, but couldn't because she was too busy raising kids (my brother was born in '84, myself in '89.)

Now, I was a little hesitant to show her the pilot episode, mostly because my mother is someone who has a difficult time suspending disbelief when watching movies/television. She can't do fantasy at all.

With respect to ML, this is compounded by the fact that she was a private investigator for over ten years

We watched the pilot, and here are realism critiques from a real bonafide PI:

1) Apparently a detective would NEVER have a red porsche--too conspicuous. Of course, what are the chances David did any detecting in it ever anyway?2) Maddie and David should've been taking written notes during their interview with the 'grieving widow.'3) They find out the widow's name my reading the obituary only a day after the guy dies. Obituaries are usually published a few days after, same with holding memorial services. Yes, my nit-picky mother noticed it. 4) She wanted to know what happened to the diamonds at the end--good question, ma!

Thought you might find this amusing--she did enjoy the show, but I think I'll need to show her a few more episodes before she really 'gets' it.

Post by witness on Sept 30, 2010 0:32:56 GMT -5

hayesydaze, thank you for sharing! Did you share with your mom Glenn Caron's observation that not before or since did he EVER see a detective agency? Particularly interesting since the genre was ubiquitous at the time of ML's popularity.

Post by hayesydaze on Sept 30, 2010 1:41:34 GMT -5

Haha, I didn't know what GGC fact, but knowing it now, I'm not surprised. The most unrealistic thing for me about the detective agency angle of ML--and I realize this is played up for laughs--is the number of wobblies working in the office. There were NEVER anywhere near that many employees working at my mom's office (and she worked at an agency of comparable size, run by a single woman.)

For all ML fans (and probably Remington Steele fans as well), this might be of interest: a large part of why my mother, a woman with absolutely no paralegal experience whatsoever, was because she was one of the few woman. Her future boss (who is the premier female investigator in the Seattle area) really wanted a female investigator because people tend to trust women and open up to them more than men. Maddie and David's ineptitude as PIs was usually split down the middle, so I won't speak to what this means in the context of the show...

And now, for fun: I actually just went on the website of my mother's former employer, and this was a paragraph on the FAQ:

Remember, real investigative work is not like in the movies. When the traffic gets bad, we can't just abandon our car and jump on a motorcycle to cut through it (this was actually shown in a movie once!). Investigators also can't engage in high speed car chases -- the risk of detection and speeding tickets would be prohibitive -- yet in the movies the investigators routinely do this type of thing. ;D ;D ;D ;D